Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
The time is always right to do what is right.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular.
We are not makers of history; we are made by history.
A lie cannot live.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability.
Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon.
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
The time is always right to do what is right.
Hypocrisy is the only evil that can assume the forms of virtue.
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
To be a man is to be fired at, not to stand in front of the mirror.
Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
We must walk on in the faith that the time will come when we will culminate our efforts in a whirlpool of justice.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.
You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.